FAIR is the national progressive media watchdog group, challenging corporate media bias, spin and misinformation.
ApparentlyRichard Holbrooke’s final words were, “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”This is being highlighted in a big way on the Drudge Report, which meansmedia people will be talking about it. Revealing, in an entirely different way, was this part of a Washington Post story (12/14/10) about the state of the Afghan War post-Holbrooke: […]
One gets the impression, reading the New York Times‘ coverage of the WikiLeaks cables, that the paper is particularly interested in documents that portray the State Department in a good light, struggling to do good in a world that continually resists its efforts. Take today’s front-page piece (12/7/10), “America Prods and Protests But Can’t Halt […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: Elites, including within the corporate media insist—against the evidence—that voters are highly concerned about the deficit. This is one of the reasons the draconian plan put forth by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, co-chairs of the president’s deficit commission, got such a friendly reception in the media. We’ll talk […]
Patrick Cockburn has a wonderful piece in the Independent (11/23/10) on the hazards of embedded journalism that is a must-read. He points out: “Embedding” also puts limitations on location and movement. Iraq and Afghanistan are essentially guerrilla wars, and the successful guerrilla commander will avoid fighting the enemy main force and instead attack where his […]
In today’s New York Times (11/22/10), Kim Severson covers the annual protest at the U.S. military training facility formerly known as the School of Americas. The point of the story, though, is that the protests aren’t such a big deal anymore (the headline: “Fort Benning Protest Dwindles, if Not Its Passion.”) The dismissive tone was […]
I agree with Keith Olbermann (11/15/10) about the dubious value of “objectivity” as a journalistic value; he makes a telling point about how journalistic icons like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow are most honored for the moments when they reached conclusions and asserted values. And I think he’s right that the U.S. media establishment’s […]
New York Times headline (11/15/10): U.S. Plan Offers Path to Ending Afghan Combat More accurate headline: U.S. Plan Extends Afghan Combat by Three Years
Time magazine’s Joe Klein has read George W. Bush’s memoir, and has a few criticisms (11/11/10); for instance, he points out that Bush never stops to wonder if the UN inspectors, whom Saddam Hussein had allowed back into Iraq, were not finding weapons of mass destruction because, maybe, uh, the WMD didn’t exist. That’s a […]
“I had a sickening feeling every time I thought about it. I still do.” That’s how George W. Bush referred to the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in his new book Decision Points. The quote is featured in Time magazine’s Verbatim section (11/15/10), and has been discussed pretty widely. This is an interesting […]
Wrapping up a panel discussion (10/31/10) on Barack Obama’s post-midterm political challenges, NBC reporter Chuck Todd raised the possibility that the Beltway debate on Afghanistan might change: On Afghanistan, the Democratic caucus that will be left, you brought this up, is going to be a very liberal caucus, very anti-war caucus. This is going to […]
It’s probably better for American political leaders that we forget the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. “A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves,” was how Secretary of State Henry Kissinger put it in 1970 (NY Times, 5/27/04), reflecting Richard Nixon’s concern that the large-scale aerial bombing wasn’t doing enough damage. […]
Washington Post columnist David Broder sees one way for Barack Obama to demonstrate leadership after the midterms–push for war with Iran. Lest one be accused of misrepresenting his argument, this is what he wrote in his October 31 column, which starts out talking about the how a president can influence the economy: What else might […]
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The firing of Juan Williams from NPR might seem like an inside media story; it’s become more as Williams, who was let go after saying people in “Muslim garb” on planes make him nervous, has become something of a cause celebre for the right. We’ll talk about what it […]
MSNBC personality Chris Matthews—who sometimes claims he was opposed to the Iraq War—worked behind the scenes to get anti-war colleague Phil Donahue fired.
Download MP3 This week on CounterSpin: The New York Times says democrats are “wielding” issues like abortion rights in hopes of frightening voters about Republican victories in upcoming elections, whereas Republicans really just want to talk about the economy. Same goes for the Tea Party: we’re told not to focus on the movement leader who […]
This week, as the Afghan War entered its 10th year, there were the usual retrospectives in the media, as well as calls to rethink the war. What’s striking, though, is how little thinking media did about the war in the first place. —Some pundits were calling for indiscriminate attacks before the Afghanistan War even started, […]
Apparently not, judging by theWashington Post‘s October 3 story (“Military Drones Aid CIA’s mission”) about the CIA’s expansion of its drone war in Pakistan.It is “part of a high-stakes attempt by the Obama administration to deal decisive blows to Taliban insurgents,” and also “a significant evolution of an already controversial targeted killing program.” Post readersget […]
Over the course of two months, the war in Afghanistan lost its commanding general over an embarrassing article in Rolling Stone magazine (6/22/10), and the website WikiLeaks (7/25/10) posted tens of thousands of classified documents that offered a stark reminder—if one were needed—of the brutal, futile nature of the U.S.-led war. But while both revelations […]
An important story is happening right now that’s not getting a whole lot of media attention. A military court is investigating claims that members of a U.S. Army Stryker unit randomly killed Afghan civilians. Some of the soldiers say they were pressured by a commanding officer into participating in the crimes. There are also reports […]
